


Odd One Out

by telm_393



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Ben Hargreeves is Alive, Child Abuse, Five never leaves, Gen, Harm to Children, Memory Issues, Mental Health Issues, Sibling Bonding, Vanya Knows About Her Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-09-30 19:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20452694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: Luther Hargreeves is the Umbrella Academy's greatest failure.He's also Vanya's brother, and she's not leaving him behind.





	Odd One Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plutonianshores](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutonianshores/gifts).

Luther’s gone. They know who has him, but not how to get him back. They're working on it, but the days drag on and on.

They know that Luther's alive because the ransom requests keep coming, month after month, along with one of Luther’s molars that Dad tests to make sure it’s him. (It's him.) They beg Dad to pay the ransom, just pay it, or even call the police, but he refuses.

After they get a pristinely preserved index finger, Allison, hysterical and fed up like the rest of them, tries to rumor Dad. Her jaw is wired shut for weeks, and she doesn't try again. 

Dad says they’re the ones who let Luther down, so it’s their job to save him. The Umbrella Academy without their leader. 

Vanya’s still not sure if he was a good one, but he was there, and he tried. He was _dedicated, _and sometimes she can’t believe that Dad thinks that testing the Academy or punishing them is worth more than Luther's life.

Vanya thought Dad loved Luther. Out of everyone, she could've sworn that he loved Luther. Diego even says it once, during one of the rages that never end well for him. “I thought he was your favorite!”

His anger burns, and Vanya shrinks away. She’s angry a lot, but she tries to hide it. If she lets it out like Diego does, it could be catastrophic. Vanya’s a walking catastrophe.

Dad doesn’t really respond to what Diego said. Instead he just tells him, “Do your job. You should have done it before. This is your failure.”

Vanya wonders if Dad thinks it’s Luther’s failure too.

(She thinks it's Dad's failure, but she doesn't say it. If she shows too much resistance to Dad, he could take everything away from her. Pogo told her once, when she was six years old and tired of training, that it wasn't in her best interest to rebel. The truth was that Pogo had only just talked her father out of stealing her powers away when she was four years old in the soundproof room.

He said,_ "_I don't mean to frighten you, Miss Hargreeves, but you must take caution."

So Vanya takes caution, because the only thing she wants less than to be special is to be ordinary.)

Diego always wanted to be the leader, but Luther was good at talking over him, at finishing his sentences, at being less hard-headed. More devoted.

Luther’s not around anymore, though, so they don’t really have a leader, but if they do, it’s Diego. Diego doesn’t really seem happy about it, even though he talks more.

Not to Vanya, though, but that's mostly her fault. She's kind of been avoiding him.

He's angry all the time.

+

They first time they fought, Vanya didn’t really know who the bad guys were. She just knew that she had to beat them, and didn’t really care otherwise.

Now she knows that the bad guys are, as Klaus says with a wiggle of his fingers and a strain in his voice a few days after Luther disappears, “Mad scientists." He lets out a high-pitched giggle. "Still asking for money, though! Guess they were just gonna do their little experiments 'til they got that cash, but, God, they'll be discovering all _sorts _of things with this extra time Daddy's giving them."

"Shut up," Ben snaps. "You're high."

The damage is done, though. Vanya starts having nightmares that make the house rumble, and then she mostly just stops sleeping, because Dad tells her that he'll have to recalibrate her if she loses control anymore, and that means the soundproof room, and Vanya will do anything to avoid that, even let him talk about her like she's a robot just like Mom.

_"_What do you think they're doing to him?" she asks Five, and he just shakes his head and says that soon it won't matter.

+

"Luther wasn't their first choice," Ben tells her once, abruptly, as they sit in her room at night. Neither of them have bothered to turn on the light. Luther's been gone for weeks. "It was me. You know I got that concussion, and I think--I'm sure that they hit me for a reason. They grabbed me, they were going to stick me with something, and Luther was watching my back. He pulled them off, and I was caught off-guard and I didn't...I didn't do anything. I just let them take him away."

Vanya remembers running into an empty room, remembers Ben holding his head and screaming, and for once the blood on his face was his, though he wasn't screaming because it hurt.

"I wish he hadn't saved me.”

Ben is Vanya's best friend, the other most dangerous member of the Umbrella Academy, the other one always walking on thin ice, just barely able to keep his steps light enough to avoid falling through.

Vanya doesn't say what she's thinking, which is, _Well_, _I'm glad it wasn't you. _

Instead she says, "You can't blame yourself."

"It is how it is," Ben whispers, and Vanya nods.

He leans his head on her shoulder and takes a deep, shaky breath.

Vanya thinks:

_I'm so glad it wasn't you._

_I'm so glad it wasn't me._

She imagines something worse than the soundproof room. It makes her sick.

+

It takes too long to find the bad guys, but they get there, and Ben and Vanya take care of them. It doesn’t take long, because what Ben and Vanya do to the people who took their brother has nothing to do with training and everything to do with their fundamental capacity for destruction that Dad's always talking about, when he remembers they exist.

“J-just attack,” Diego ordered. “Just kill them. They deserve it.”

And there's no "do I have to?" from Ben, no resigned frown from Vanya. They follow Diego's orders without thinking twice, because they want it to end. It’s about finding their brother. It’s about everything going back to normal, even though normal kind of sucks, because without Luther everything is wrong. There’s seven people in the Umbrella Academy. That’s how it’s supposed to be.

That's how Dad likes it. 

A ghost that makes Klaus pale and stutter tells him that to get to Luther, they have to go through the shining, winding steel-plated hallway, and then turn left to get to his cell. His cell. That’s the word the ghost used.

They follow her instructions until they’re faced with what’s obviously the cell, even though it looks more like a big metal box. Vanya feels her heartbeat race, and it thumps in her ears.

The sound vibrates down her back and through her arms. It blankets her whole body, and everything around her goes pale. She clenches her hands into fists, but controls herself before ripping the front of the metal container off and lets Five blink in first and see if there’s a less _ostentatious_ way to open it up. His word, not hers.

He’s gone for a few minutes, and Vanya sees, out of the corner of her eye, Allison’s ponytail whipping around. Dad had Vanya’s own hair cut very short to keep it from getting in her face when she uses her powers.

The sound-waves running through Vanya’s body are almost unbearable by the time Five blinks out of the cell. His face is pale and his jaw is clenched and he sounds frustrated when he says, “I can’t get it open. Vanya?”

He gives her a nod, and Vanya tears the cell apart and runs in, the thrumming in her body and the tension in her back alleviating for a little bit.

Luther is sitting cross-legged on a bed, not doing anything as far as Vanya can tell. He’s looking at the floor, and his eyebrows draw together just a tiny bit once Vanya and the others come in.

Vanya thought that at least Allison, who’s been beside herself for months, or Five, who’s been completely obsessed with getting Luther back since he disappeared, would approach him, but none of them move. Vanya barely breathes. The room is quiet, and it makes Vanya itch with unease.

It’s dark, or it was dark before the light from the hallway spilled in, with just a lightbulb in the ceiling. There’s a bed and some books and a few notebooks strewn around.

There’s more in this room than there is in the soundproof one, and Vanya almost has the chance to feel bitter about it before she scans the surroundings just like she’s been taught to and sees that there are dents on the walls. Those walls are all least three feet thick, and Vanya feels a little sick imagining Luther trying to get through them with nothing but his bare hands. For a while he must’ve thought he was strong enough to do it.

Dad’s always trying to find their limits. It looks like someone else found Luther’s.

He’s not pacing around the room like Vanya imagined he would be, all worked up, and he’s still looking at the floor nearly a minute after they’ve come in. He hasn’t moved from his seat on the bed.

But none of them have moved, and Vanya feels a sting of annoyance at that. She and Luther aren’t even all that close, and she already knows she’s the one who’s going to talk to him first, if this is even really Luther. Maybe it’s a robot or something.

The idea fills Vanya with panic, and she walks towards Luther, finally, hesitant as always. She kicks a blunted pencil out of the way.

Luther likes to write. He fills up journal after journal. She got up the courage to ask him what he was writing about once, and he drew in on himself and told her he was just writing down observations. He looked like he thought she’d make fun of him. Vanya doesn’t make fun of people much. Not to their faces, at least. She tries not to be mean.

She tries not to be anything, just the monster in the background. Ben understands, which is why it’s funny that now he’s moving forward too, following her lead. The ones that usually don’t say anything, but now they seem to be the only people brave enough to face whatever Luther's become.

Ben’s a step behind Vanya. She can hear his shaky breathing, and has to blink hard to make it get out of her head before it turns into the only thing she can hear.

Vanya’s standing in front of Luther. It’s only been a few steps from the opening she’s made to the bed he’s sitting on. She feels like she’s walked a long way, maybe over a bridge.

She leans down a little. She thinks maybe Luther’s had a growth spurt. It’s nearly been a year, so probably.

She puts her hands on her knees, and for a moment an image—Mom in that same position, telling her to be a good girl and take her medicine and she’d be out of the room soon—flashes through her mind. She does her best to ignore it and says, “Luther?”

Her voice comes out high and unsure.

Luther doesn’t seem to respond. Maybe he’s drugged. Maybe he really is just some kind of robot now.

With his blond hair and pale skin, he looks like their mother’s son.

Vanya reaches out a hesitant, shaking hand, and puts two fingers on Luther’s neck. He feels clammy, but human, and his heartbeat thumps against her skin. “Luther, it’s Vanya,” she says. “Do you...” she trails off. It feels very wrong to ask her brother something like _do you know who I am? _

Of course he does. He’s Luther. He’s the leader. Always following them around, always giving suggestions couched as orders, always trying to help even when they don’t need it, intense to the point of obsession.

He curls up on the couch and writes while she practices the violin and Ben reads beside him.

(Vanya doesn’t say it, but she thinks his writing is just another way to copy Dad. By the time Luther disappeared, Vanya and her siblings had learned not to idolize Reginald Hargreeves. Luther hadn’t.

Vanya wonders if his opinion’s changed. If it hasn’t, she wonders if it will change when he finds out that there was a ransom that Dad didn't even try to pay. That he thought a rescue mission would be a good test, and let them torture him in the meantime.

Maybe they won’t tell him.)

“Luther,” she says again, and her voice cracks as her gaze drifts down to Luther's left hand. Two fingers left. 

He's wearing a hoodie with the hood down and sweatpants and they cover most of his body, but when Vanya looks a little closer she can see ugly, mottled scars creeping up his neck. _"Luther," _she says one more time, and she must sound really upset, because it seems to move something in him. At the very least it makes him move his head to look at her. His eyes are wide and vacant, but Vanya sees recognition. Vanya’s learned how to read people over time, to figure out how to keep them calm. How to keep them from noticing her.

(How to keep them from making her lose control.)

She tries to smile and is pretty sure she fails. Vanya isn’t good at smiling, and she’s really, really bad at faking smiles.

Luther doesn’t seem to mind. He makes an attempt at a smile back. He’s usually better at faking. Vanya thinks, sometimes, that a lot of Luther that seems genuine isn’t. That he’s afraid too, and that’s why he tries to be the best.

(Then again, that was Luther before. Vanya doesn’t know how he’s changed.

She’s afraid he’s changed a lot.

She doesn’t like change much. Usually it means a transition into something worse, even when the something before was already bad.)

Ben crouches down in front of Luther and takes one of his hands. “Hey,” he says gently. “Let’s go home.”

Luther just slowly turns his head to look at him. He blinks.

Allison finally says, in a soft voice, sounding more scared than Vanya’s ever heard her, “I heard a rumor you got up and went home with us.”

Luther’s eyes cloud over and then clear up, and he stands. Vanya can hear Allison’s sigh of relief. At least she still has some control over things. Over him.

Maybe that’s not a nice thing to think, but Vanya doesn’t mean it in a mean way. Control is important. It’s the most important thing. If they don’t have control, something terrible could happen.

Luther is still holding Ben’s hand.

Ben smiles at him. Vanya’s so used to seeing Ben covered in blood that she doesn’t register that there’s blood all over his uniform and on his face, but Luther frowns. He takes his free hand and tries to wipe away the red that’s drying on Ben’s cheek under his mask.

Ben shakes his head and smiles. Vanya wonders if he’s crying behind the mask, because his smile looks wobbly. Luther puts his hand down and lets Ben start leading him away.

“You’re bleeding,” Luther says, and tears of relief prick at Vanya’s eyes. He’s talking. He can still talk.

Ben says, in a soft, reassuring voice, “It’s not my blood.”

Vanya helped him tear the bad guys apart. They’re not going to bother anyone else anymore. It was nice to see the blood and hear the screams, but it doesn’t matter all that much, in the end. Luther already got hurt.

Allison reaches out to him as he gets closer, but Luther hunches over and pulls away. Allison lets out a broken sound. Vanya thinks she’s crying. Luther’s never pulled away from her before.

Being without Luther’s taken a toll on Allison. They were always together. Diego is standing next to her, slumped, because being without Luther’s taken a toll on him too, even if it’s because they were always fighting. Five’s expression is stormy.

Five moves to walk with Vanya, helping her flank Luther and Ben as Allison and Diego, for once, trail behind.

Luther is quiet. He smiles when he sees their father, who strides up to him and embraces him, which catches them all off-guard except, apparently, Luther, and he says, “Dad.”

Then he retreats back into silence, and that’s where he stays most of the time.

+

Before Luther disappeared, Five was totally obsessed with time travel. Now he’s…well, he’s still obsessed, but unlike before it happened, when Vanya really thought he was going to jump through time as soon as he maybe could, he’s pacing himself. He’s perfecting his powers. He’s figuring things out. That’s what he says.

Five finds, over the time that Luther’s gone, that he can, in fact, time travel. He can go into the future. He makes sure to go just a few minutes, and is more excited than Vanya’s ever seen him when she catches up.

His excitement turns to frustration pretty quickly, though, because he still can’t do what he really wants to do, and Five hates not getting what he wants.

One night after lights out, when Vanya and Ben have snuck into Five’s room with food and are talking while Five is scribbling in one of his notebooks, Five announces, “It could be devastating.”

Ben and Vanya fall silent, because that’s what they do when Five talks. “What?” Vanya asks.

“All I can do so far is go to the future, and if I do, if I keep going forward and going forward, I wouldn’t be able to get back. I could get effectively stranded in time. I could—Vanya? Why are you crying?” The question sounds like a demand, but his expression is concerned.

Ben puts a tentative hand on Vanya’s shoulder and squeezes. It’s strange. Vanya’s not a crier. Not anymore.

“Don’t do that, Five,” Vanya says. “Don’t leave us. I can’t lose you too.” She’s all over the place and she and Luther weren’t even close, and now Five is talking about what could happen if he did something stupid and she’s afraid, maybe for no reason, because Five doesn’t really do stupid things, that he’s going to go away too. She and Five are close. Without him, she doesn’t know if she could keep going.

“You’re being overemotional, Vanya,” Five says. “I’m not planning to do it. I’m sharing objective conclusions I’ve come to. What gave you the idea that I’d actually try to go that far from any of my previous statements?”

“Five, you’re talking about disappearing, it’s _kinda _a touchy subject,” Ben admonishes, and Five softens.

“What I’m saying is that if I had jumped through time before I was ready, I might’ve stranded myself. I’ve just been thinking about it a lot. And what I’m saying is that I can’t go _back. _I don’t know how to go back yet, and that’s what I want. If I go back, I can stop Luther from getting snatched.”

“What happens to the months in between?” Ben asks, and Five shrugs.

“They change, I guess. But that’s just months. A drop in the ocean. It’d be worth it to fix this whole mess.”

Vanya knows that Five takes Luther’s disappearance as a personal failure. They all do.

She still has her doubts about what he’s saying, but she doesn’t share them.

They find Luther before Five can figure out how to go back, but after that he’s just as fixated on traveling, because everything is just as broken. Maybe even more broken. He keeps making timelines, marking down points where he could go back and change things, fix things as time goes by without fucking them up too much. A flap of a butterfly’s wings, and all.

Saving Luther from getting kidnapped becomes saving Luther shortly after he got kidnapped becomes saving Luther halfway through becomes stopping Luther from hurting Dad and getting drugged up becomes general theories on time travel and a potential ticket out of the Academy through some elite scholarship.

Sometimes Five still goes back to basics, though.

“With every year that passes, time becomes more fragile, and changing one _specific _event, saving Luther, could put everything at risk, put all of us at risk,” Five says, pacing his room.

It’s well after they get Luther back, and it’s only in moments like these that Vanya is reminded that Five’s obsession with going to the past started with their brother.

Vanya’s tuning her violin, and Ben’s filling out a college application. They nod absentmindedly. They know that Five’s grasping at straws, repeating himself, getting stuck on things that aren’t going to help anyone because he’s trying to push away the fact that everything is changing. That’s what Ben thinks, at least. Five will always insist that he’s not afraid of change, and that Diego and Allison leaving hasn’t thrown him off at all.

“Do you think Luther would even want you to go back?” Ben asks idly. "You know, even though it's just a thought experiment by now."

Five stops pacing. He frowns and says, “I never asked.”

Vanya and Ben share a look.

(Vanya isn’t sure of the answer. She gets the feeling he’d be worried it was too dangerous. Not the right thing to do. Selfish. Tactically flawed. Or maybe not. She hasn’t asked either. Not because she couldn’t be bothered, but because she didn’t want to upset Luther with fantasies.)

“When’s the last time you even talked to Luther?” Ben asks, and Five huffs.

“I have work to do,” he mutters.

Neither of them push. It’s not really worth it.

+

After Luther gets back and it becomes clear that he won’t ever be the same again, most of Vanya’s siblings can’t really handle that. She gets it, she guesses, but it isn't the same for her. It isn't the same for Ben either. They feel bad about what happened, but not like the others do, the kind of feeling bad where they can barely look at their own brother. Like always, Ben and Vanya are different, and they end up spending more time with Luther than they did before, until being with him becomes normal.

Ben and Vanya eat with Luther, forgoing time with their other siblings, and sneak into his room after lights out to hang out with him. Vanya thinks that maybe the moment that she and Ben approached Luther in that cell, he became a part of their little team of freaks among freaks, and there’s nothing like being outcasts together. It took Luther fourteen years to be forced to learn that, but Vanya and Ben have known it since the beginning.

And Vanya and Ben can handle the reality of Luther’s situation.

They know who he used to be isn’t coming back, and that there’s no saving him from something that already happened, and they know who he is now better than who he was before anyway, and like him just fine.

Vanya likes the way that Luther smiles at her, likes the way that he chatters on at her like he did when they were little kids, when he does talk, likes the way that he tries to distract her when she’s sad.

When he’s upset, which is a lot, it’s Vanya and Ben that can calm him down. He’s never tried to hurt either of them before on purpose, never tried to push them away. He always twists away from Allison or Diego or Five or Klaus.

Ben thinks it’s because he’s ashamed.

Vanya would tell Luther not to be ashamed, but she doesn’t want to be a hypocrite, because she's ashamed of him too. They all are. Not because he's like this, but because he's like this because of them.

("Fuck you, he's like this because of Dad," Five says when she mentions it, the only time he's ever seemed really angry at her.

She knows he doesn't believe that, just like she doesn't, even though it's true.)

The guilt is like another member of the family, always dogging their steps, holding their hands, living with Luther in the room he barely leaves.

Some days, Luther breaks down, and Vanya talks to him in a low, soothing voice while he rambles about some living nightmare, sliding down the wall because he desperately wants to defend himself against something he can't quite remember or define but is too drugged to stay on his feet, and she hates herself for the way she thinks, over and over again, _I'm so glad I'm not like you._

+

Diego is the first to leave. Then Allison. Then Klaus. They go in the middle of the night, without saying goodbye, and their father rages and gives endless lectures about loyalty and usefulness, but doesn’t try to get them back. The house feels emptier.

Then Five and Ben get into NYU, Five’s research into time travel already sought after and Ben’s decision to study psychology not particularly surprising, and it’s time for them to get out too.

And Vanya’s still around.

She didn’t think she was loyal, but she’s loyal enough to stay. There are some things she can’t let go of, some things she can’t leave behind. Some people she can’t leave behind.

(One person she can’t leave behind.)

Ben promises Luther and Vanya, tears in his voice, that he’s not leaving them like the others did. He and Five will set everything up in the city, and they’ll call once they know that it’ll be safe for Luther and Vanya to go, and then—

Then Vanya won’t be a superhero anymore. Then Luther won’t have to stay locked up and drugged. He’ll be able to have a life. He’ll be able to be himself, whoever that is.

And the same will go for Vanya. Finally. Sometimes she feels like she’s been drugged too.

Luther smiles at him. He says, “I get it, Ben. It’s okay.”

And then it’s just Vanya and Luther. Vanya is counting down the days until they can go. Luther seems like he’s willing to leave, but she feels a sharp anxiety about it all the time. She practices what to say to him if he refuses, and hopes that he’ll just go with her, that it’ll be one of his docile nights.

Ben calls, finally, and Vanya goes into Luther’s room and tells him, with all the confidence she’s never had, “Let’s pack up. We’re ready to leave.”

Luther frowns. “I don’t…can we? Can we? But Dad…”

It’s not one of his docile nights. Of course. That would be too easy.

It’s like him to be reluctant, though. He plays things safe. He was bolder before, but that’s not who he is anymore, Vanya guesses.

Vanya squares her jaw and pulls herself up to her full height, as unimpressive as it is.

Vanya shakes her head. “Dad doesn’t matter.”

Luther looks a little scandalized, and Vanya sighs. “You know he doesn’t. Luther, he didn’t…he didn’t save you. When it…when it happened. He made it into a test. Whatever they did to you, he let it happen. You know that, right? We’ve…we’ve said that.”

Luther’s eyes are glossy when he blinks, and he swallows hard. “He had his reasons.”

“He always has his reasons, but we were kids and he wasn’t. He could’ve saved you, Luther. You were…” _Different. You could’ve been someone else. You know it. We’ve talked about it enough. _

Vanya feels an overwhelming sense of deja vu. It’s like that with Luther sometimes. He has to be reminded of things, so it’s the same conversations over and over again as he comes to the same decisions over and over again, more quickly every time.

But Vanya’s scared that this time the decision is going to be different. She desperately doesn’t want Luther to surprise her. He hasn’t in a long time.

Vanya’s eyes catch on Luther’s shelf. It’s full of painted figurines and models of cars and airplanes and helicopters, all the things that Luther hasn’t been in for years.

Ben said, once, while helping paint one of the airplanes blue, “When we leave, we’ll actually go places on airplanes. I mean, not to fight, to visit. Like normal people who get to, y’know, do people things.”

It was the first time he mentioned leaving, and neither Vanya or Luther pointed that out. Vanya at least was too afraid to fathom the idea of quitting the Academy, of being a _normal person. _Being a person with a life at all.

Luther was either feeling the same way or too foggy to even notice Ben was speaking. They were fifteen then, and at fifteen it was pretty up in the air whether he was processing anything at any given time.

It took a while for Vanya to embrace the idea of getting out, for it to stop feeling so forbidden. Maybe it was Diego and Allison and Klaus leaving, the way that it was just _that easy _for them to get out from under Dad’s thumb, that made it stop feeling like a fantasy.

Luther crosses his arms over his stomach. When he was fourteen, he was just a little taller than Vanya, but Vanya had already stopped growing by then, and Luther hadn’t.

(If he is really so dangerous, so uncontrollable off his meds, he could hurt Vanya badly. But she could hurt him badly back. That’s how it is.

They’ll figure it out. They have to try.)

Right now he looks less than his six foot five, though. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, Luther looks like the lost kid who Vanya thought was maybe a robot.

“He could’ve saved you,” Vanya repeats again, and she’s glad that he’s heard it enough times now to not have the devastated reaction he did when Diego broke the news to him. The rest of them were angry at Diego then, but he was right to tell Luther, Vanya can see that now. It was the beginning of Luther drifting away from his father, as much as he sometimes forgets that he has.

Luther says, “I know. But he cares about me, and he’s waiting. He’s waiting until it’s time. I mean, I’m training. I’m in shape and everything, and eventually he’ll get me off the meds and…”

The words are more fluent than Luther’s usual speech, but it’s only because he’s said them so many times. He’s heard them so many times. Vanya’s heard them already too, and she cuts him off. “If Dad ever actually does that, and I’m not even sure he will, it won’t be because he cares. It’ll be because everyone else is gone, and there’s no one _better _to put effort into. You’re a last resort.”

Luther looks at Vanya wide-eyed and hurt, but she doesn’t stop talking, because if she leaves without him, she knows that Dad will be able to twist him into thinking that what he’s forgotten is that he’s loyal to Dad, and not that he isn’t.

This is about saving their lives.

“You’re worth more than that, right? We’re all worth more than the Umbrella Academy.” That’s what Ben says, what Five says, what Diego and Allison said, and Vanya’s given up on not believing it. She’s no hero. She’s just a soldier without choices, until now. “I’ve been part of it forever, and it’s not that great, and you shouldn’t have to be all alone, and…”

She takes a deep breath. Her eyes are burning, and Luther looks concerned.

“We can have a real life, Luther,” Vanya whispers. “You can have a real life. He’s locked you up and drugged you since you were a kid, and if that changes, I don’t know if what would happen would…would be better. But we’re grown-ups now. We don’t need him.”

Vanya feels her heartbeat spike with hope when Luther looks at her with recognition, because it’s not her he’s recognizing—he already knows her. He’s recognizing the truth.

Vanya nearly cries when Luther takes a deep breath and says, “Okay.” He pauses for a tense moment and then asks, “Will I still take the pills?”

“We will get you off the pills and we’ll figure out where to go from there,” Vanya promises. _We’ll figure out what you actually need. _Dad says Luther’s _impaired, _but Vanya’s pretty sure that he never actually bothered to figure out how. “That’s, that’s what Ben said.”

“Dad says I’m too dangerous right now,” Luther points out, and Vanya can’t do anything but shrug.

“I’m dangerous too. So’s Ben. But we’re…we deal with it. We can all deal with it. Not because it’s good for the Academy, just because it’ll be better like that.”

Luther sighs, and when he looks at her his expression is exhausted and sad. “He doesn’t care about me like I want him to. Does he?”

Vanya shakes her head and whispers, “No. But I do. Care. And Ben does. We all do. And I think…that’s enough. Right?”

Luther gives her a bittersweet smile, and only hesitates a little before he nods. “I guess so.”

He gets quiet for a while, and then he says, “We should go before we have a chance to change our minds.”

Vanya grins without trying, relieved. She’s been getting through to Luther for years, and she thinks that maybe she’s proud of that. She’s proud of them both, for once. “Good idea.”

There’s a world outside this room, outside this house, and it’s time to be a part of it.


End file.
